Kennedy Space Center is open to the public now. You can go out there and get a tour to the spot where they launched space shuttles. And honestly, it's kind of awe-inspiring just how much went into making those launches happen. The incredible engineering of the launchpad elevators and supports, the triple-reinforced roads that could support the weight of the fully assembled shuttle and the massive caterpillar-treaded platform that would drive it down there standing fully upright. A thousand feats of human ingenuity all put in place to make one big thing happen.

Only problem is there's no space shuttle to be launched anymore. All that stuff on Merritt Island Sound is just sitting there, quietly waiting for something that already happened and will not happen again.

Life imitates art.

NOTES

BEAT WHY ARE YOU BABBLING ABOUT THE SPACE SHUTTLE PROGRAM THAT WAS DISCONTINUED IN 2010? Oh cuz like, there's no more space shuttles, but you can still see the launchpad, just like how in Knuckles Launch Base Zone, there's no Death Egg, but all the stuff for it is still there. It's like deep or something.

THAT'S STUPID.You're stupid!

DOUBLE MINIBOSS. instead of getting a harder version of Sonic's Act 1 boss, Knuckles just fights two of them at once. Also if he gets hit, his rings will fall right through the floor. Lame.

KNUCKLES' ACT 2 LOOKS PRETTY DIFFERENT FROM SONIC'S. They're both in the same level, but Knuckle's route through it is much lower down and doesn't intersect with Sonic's until near the end. As such his stage background consists of a ground eye view of a bunch of crumbling brick walls instead Sonic's birds eye view of lakes and mountains in the distance. It's a really nice way of making the two experiences feel unique!

THAT FUCKING FLOOD BIT. Like, it's a neat setpiece, and everything, but uuuggh so annoying. All you have to do to not die is NOT curl into a ball on that last spring before the corkscrew ride. But I LIKE BEING A BALL! So I drown and have to do it again. And then shortly afterwards I die on the boss without getting a checkpoint and get sent back and have to do it again again.

OH SO YEAH ABOUT THOSE BOSSES. So I talked about these guys a lot back in part 7, like how BIG ARM was taken out of Sonic's game and then put back in by the hackers and blah blah blah. Well in Knuckles' game, Big arm is always there! Just, showing up like he's a totally normal boss that comes in after the first one! Because FUCK consistency.

BEAT: We can forgive [Knuckles] for not being smart, but the living alone part doesn't explain why he's an asshole.FanboyMaster: Well who was he supposed to interact with?!BEAT: I'm just saying, like- if someone lived alone their entire lives, I don't know that they would take such exaggerated delight in displaying their utter contempt for you.FanboyMaster: Listen, Sanic needed to be knocked down a peg.

FBZ2 ("Hang Mobile"): Constantly shoots out flames now, both when hanging below the platform (which is mostly common with Sonic -- though those flames only fire when Sonic is over the craft) and when rotating around it, meaning you have to hit him from the side instead of the top, so it's harder to chain hits and has more risk of knockback into those spike arms.

ICZ1 ("Big Icedus"): No difference from what I can tell. The craft's starting height is too tall for Knuckles to hit, and it reaches a hittable height after doing a full sweep across the screen (possible to hit while invincible but otherwise you'll take damage on contact with those ice balls).

ICZ2 ("Freezer Mobile"): The platform from the boss moves up and down now, meaning those side jets are more likely to hit you while you try to attack. I think the ice jets fire a little more frequently too. Plus, without a 2P partner you can't be freed from an ice block.

LBZ1 ("Twin Hammer"): There are two of them! And yeah, you have a much harder time regaining rings. Since the platform you stand on isn't actually solid ground, the rings don't have physics calculated for it, so they just fall right through it. One of the bosses that really stymied my Knuckles runs as a kid.

LBZ2 ROCKET BOSS: Not much difference, though I think the spikeball around the cockpit starts from a slightly different place so it's a threat earlier on the craft's approach upward.

LBZ2 BIG ARM: The boss that closes Sonic 3 is actually slightly faster as Knuckles, because it does four of the sweeps along the side of the screen where it's most open. Of course, Knuckles can't really hit it when it's moving along the top and bottom of the screen the way Sonic can.

SOME DUMB S&K VS S3&K DIFFERENCES WHY NOT. In S&K by itself, Mushroom Hill as Knuckles starts with a little cutscene where Knuckles gets all pissed off at eggrobo. S3&K skips this scene entirely, and S3C recreates it at the start of Angle Island Zone, as we saw in Part 15. It also have a slightly longer first act when played as a part of S3&K, than in S&K, in the form of a little introductory area where the player will be forced to encounter a big FLASHY RING and find out about the SUPER EMERALDS. S&K doesn't use any of those things, so it just skips that chunk of the level entirely.

THERE'S A FEW KNUCKLES-SPECIFIC BITS HERE AND THERE. Nothing I'd consider too drastic. Mostly just the part where you smash right through the wall into the area where he was playing with his cool switch at the beginning of Act 2.

DOUBLE BUNGEE OF UNLIMITED JOY. At 04:15, I reach that one spot where you get stuck on these little cords attached to the floor and ceiling. You're supposed to just do a quick spindash to escape, but I much prefer using the glide to cause them to freak the hell out. Then I go out, get a bunch more rings and return as Hyper Knuckles to freak them the hell out EVEN HARDER. So good, you guys. So good.

BEAT: I can't remember if Sandopolis has any big differences for Knuckles' playthrough.FanboyMaster: Knuckles has to deal with PTSD much worse because it's the ghosts of his ancestors chasing him. [...] Sonic's just like "Hahaha I'm grave robbing!"BEAT: Sonic's like "I'm just turning on these fuckin lights" and Knuckles is like "...dad?!?"

NOTES

I DON'T BELIEVE THERE'S ANY BIG KNUCKLES-SPECIFIC ROUTING IN ACT 1. If there is, it wasn't important enough for me to actually notice it. Which is fine, because it's a pretty damn good Act 1. If It ain't broke don't fix it and all that.

THE OTHER WAY TO KILL THE ACT 1 BOSS. So it doesn't matter how the big jumping Golem gets into the quicksand at the far left, so long as he gets there. So this time instead of bothering to attack him or anything, I just let him jump in all by himself.

THE GHOSTS ARE ALREADY OUT AND ABOUT AT THE START OF ACT 2. In a nice nod to the fact that this all took place after Sonic's big day. You don't have to release the ghosts Robotnick busted, because Sonic already did it. So when Knuckles shows up they've all just been sitting around twiddling their thumbs and wondering who they'll get to haunt next for a week or so.

I WANNA BUST GHOSTS. Like the best of em got my back pack strapped necessary for for spectral wrestling.

WHERE WAS I OH RIGHT THE ACT 2 KNUCKLES ROUTE HAS THE WORST THING IN THE GAME. You can see it in the video starting at 10:10. It's a puzzle room where the door will close too fast to reach, so you need to push a block into its switch to jam it open. To do that, you have to find the sandfall to fill in the bottom half of the room. It's not that hard to figure out, but it's slow and plodding and relies on you climbing a thing your VIDEO GAME INSTINCTS will tell you can't be climbed. The whole thing is just a giant pain in the ass, and should have been left on the cutting room floor.

There are mostly shortcuts hidden behind breakable walls in the top area of the first act. There aren't a lot of long Knuckles-specific routes, but Act 1 is also one of the most sprawling levels with limited crossover opportunities between paths. It's the only level aside from I guess technically Carnival Night 2 where Knuckles-exclusive paths are completely optional.

ACT 1 SEEMS TO GO BY AWFULLY FAST. I can't really remember if Sonic's Act 1 is significantly longer, or if it just feels longer because I'm bad at it. I'm pretty bad at video games, you guys.

ACT 2 FEELS MUCH MORE SUBSTANTIAL. Just, bigger in general, you know? Also I cheese a decent chunk of it with Hyper Knuckles, because frankly we need more hyper Knuckles in this LP.

HEY REMEMBER HOW AWESOME THE ACT 2 BOSS WAS IN SONIC'S PLAYTHROUGH? Well those memories are all you have here, because Knuckles' Act 2 has no boss at all! Doesn't even have an egg capsule or a score talley! Just exit stage right, fade to black. And it makes sense because the Death Egg was shown as the reason Sonic's Act 2 Boss happened and the Death egg already blew up in space, but man, did it really have to be just nothing?

BEAT: I'm just chilling right now, I got nothing to say. This is a bad Let's Play video. I'm a bad Let's Player.

Knuckles' route through Lava Reef is similar to Carnival Night, in that it's at the bottom of the stage and the compactness makes it a lot shorter. That said, you can jump over the jackhammer machine at the start to take a set of stairs up that leads to where Sonic's route is.

The default Knuckles route also never shows the background which is good because they never scrubbed out the subtle appearance of the Death Egg in the background of the stage in vanilla S&K/S3K -- yet another oversight fixed in S3 Complete!

To [Metal Sonic] I say: serves ya right jackass! You suck and I'm glad you're dead forever and have zero chance of returning in the form of, I dunno, a surprise final boss or something! Loser!

Huh.

Huh.

Okay then.

NOTES

KNUCKLES' SKY SANCTUARY ISN'T REALLY A "LEVEL" BUT WHO CARES BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME. I mean, yeah, it kinda sucks that Knuckles doesn't get a PROPER Sky Sanctuary Zone, or get to run around in a space station or fly through a metor field or anything but I just can't be mad about that because man everything about this is so fucking cool! I mean just look at the floating island teetering in the background! It's such a great way of driving home what's at stake if you lose! Man I love this game!

YOU GOTTA LET EGGROBO HUG YOU. It's impossible to avoid his grasping claw, and it will get you eventually. When I first saw his crane game setup as a kid, I ran away as fast as I could. Now I jump into it on purpose so that I might face my destiny faster!

FIGHTING NORMAL MECHA SONIC IS JUST A FORMALITY. Like oh yeah might as well. A little warmup why not.

SUDDENLY THE MASTER EMERALD AND SUPER METAL SONIC AAAAAA!!! I don't care how corny it is or how much of a ripoff of Dragonball Z it all is. This whole thing is FUCKING SICK. S3&K has the three best final bosses in all of 16 bit gaming, and you can quote me on that.

BIPLANE RESCUE, ROLL CREDITS. Thanks for the lift Sonic! Sorry about all those times I was a total asshole. You can just drop me off wherever.

FanboyMaster: Did you just call him "Hecka Sonic"?BEAT: Mecha.FanboyMaster: No. Hecka Sonic. I've decided this.BEAT: Hecka Sonic works too! I'm not gonna say no to that.

Ah yes, the fight that launched a thousand flash animations. S3&K was one of those games I used to do weekly playthroughs as a kid, so many fond memories. I even kind of enjoyed the less bullshit special stages.

MHZ1 ("Hey Ho"): The most noticeable change is that the logs it knocks from the tree sometimes bounce down at an angle, making them harder to dodge if you're not playing smartly and standing under the boss until it goes down. There's another difference, but the boss usually goes down too quickly for you to see it. As Sonic, once it knocks down the whole tree trunk its axe gets stuck (giving a chance to get a few more free hits in if you still haven't beaten it) and in trying to free it, it bounces across the bottom of the screen and then flies away. With Knuckles, it successfully hits the last log and flies its head around the screen before flying away. It's also not possible for Knuckles to hit the boss while it's knocking off the first log chunk, since it's too high up on the screen, though Sonic and Tails can reach it from there just fine.

MHZ2 ("Jet Mobile"): This boss's spikeball patterns tend to be more in the way and lower to the ground than Sonic's, and there's also one one layout in the pattern with two rows of the spikes that Knuckles is intended (but not strictly required, as demonstrated in the video) to glide across.

SZ1 ("Guardian"): No difference, as far as I can tell.

SZ2 ("Egg Golem"): It moves much faster to the right with Knuckles, and the lower jump height means Knuckles has to take more care in hitting it and needs to stand on its extended arms to reach the cockpit. While it's possible to climb onto the back wall, there's no way to avoid being crushed by the boss once it reaches the edge of the arena because the game will force Knuckles off the wall once it gets there -- there's an unused animation where the boss very quickly backs up to its original starting point, but it can't be seen without using the debug/edit mode. [Unrelatedly, this boss shares its name with a similar boss in Sonic Adventure 2 also fought in that game's desert area.]

LRZ1 ("Heat arms"): No difference aside from Knuckles not being able to defeat the eyestalks that pop up at the start at their peak height. Only the hand actually counts either way (this is true for Sonic and Tails as well, but it's easier to kill those stalks with them and it makes the hand return more quickly).

LRZ2 ("Hot mobile"): Wait, what boss? Not even a capsule, probably going back to the whole "Did Robotnik build this giant theme park without anyone noticing?" question -- probably, which is why that level has a capsule and this one, with ruins mostly untouched by Robotnik (Death Egg landing spot notwithstanding), doesn't.

HPZ ("Knuckles"): You don't actually fight Knuckles here, he just runs quickly to the teleporter and transitions into Sky Sanctuary.

SSZ ("Mecha Sonic"): I don't think the first form is particularly different, though you're almost certainly not going to have as many rings to fight him with as Knuckles. Obviously the super form afterward is completely unique.

Additional Sky Sanctuary trivia:

If you fail to get all the chaos emeralds, not only does the island sink back down to the sea, but the after-game cutscene shows Mecha Sonic using the emerald to power back up again. The real baddie of Knuckles' story?! (Relatedly, there's no after-game cutscene at all as Knuckles with the 7 chaos emeralds here, only if he gets all 7 super emeralds.)

The device Knuckles is captured in by the eggrobo is actually the same as the machine used to carry the master emerald in Sonic's story in Hidden Palace and the Death Egg boss's last phase. Presumably the eggrobo was using it to bring the master emerald to Mecha Sonic and happened to have it around to capture Knuckles with.

The island isn't just tilting: it is actually very slowly sinking while the fight is going on, but it's going very slowly down screen. In prerelease versions, the island falls much more noticeably, and is near the bottom of the screen after about 3 minutes. In the final version, it's near the bottom of the screen once the time limit is reached -- which, since 10 minutes is far more than enough time to beat both forms of Metal Sonic, means you have to wait a long time to really notice it. Presumably this was changed to keep the level time limit consistent with the rest of the game, though if they'd committed to the idea, a 3 minute countdown timer would have given the level a time tension similar to that of the Super Sonic ring count during The Doomsday.

EPILOGUE BONUS POST!BEAT, YOU'VE KIND OF ALREADY COVERED AT LENGTH HOW MUCH YOU ADORE THE 16-BIT SONIC GAMES AND HOW MUCH YOU APPRECIATE THE LITTLE ADDITIONS THESE ROMHACKS MAKE. DO YOU REALLY HAVE ANYTHING LEFT TO SAY HERE?

WELL I MEAN I GOT THESE BUMPS I MADE FOR POSSIBLE EDITS I ENDED UP NOT NEEDING.

LOL JK ACTUALLY I MADE THESE AFTER THE WHOLE LP WAS POSTED.

THERE IS NO LOGIC BEHIND MY ACTIONS.

WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU BEAT.

IDK LOL.

TAILS PLAYTHROUGH?

Well, on one hand, I've already pointed out pretty much everything I wanted to point out in both the videos and my writeups. Tails uses the exact same level layouts as Sonic, and S3C's 1-player Tails controls options already let me show off some of the areas only Tails could reach in the Sonic Playthrough. There really isn't that much else I could show off.

On the other hand, I really like playing this game and I certainly wouldn't be opposed to kicking back with a few people in voice some random lazy evening and streaming some video games.

So maybe I'll do it and just post the videos sometime. Like, as just a little bonus thing why not.

Maybe.

IS SONIC GOOD?

Sonic is fucking great.

CREDITSSKYPE DISCORD BROSMorningSong: Showing up out of nowhere and making me go all like whaaat.Smiler: Really sad about how Sonic died.Rebelfire: Tyrant radio represent!Caliscrub: Drinking buddies represent!Patito: Somari is a treasure and should be treated as suchTrynant: "Sound off."Kishi: It's not Doomsday, it's The Doomsday.MagFlare: Where my loyalties lie.MarsDragon: Thwarted by my clever ruse!MuteKi: A fountain of endless Hedgehog Knowledge.FanboyMaster: Hecka Sonic.

PEOPLE WHO MADE THE THREAD AWESOMEKishi: For using his renowned skills to fill the thread with wonderful little gifs.MuteKi: For adding even more gifs, and for his wonderfully detailed write-ups on boss patterns and other details.

AND FINALLY...YOU: I am overjoyed that so many of you liked this series, and I'm filled with encouragement every time someone posts in this thread or tweets at my updates or comments on my videos. You guys are awesome. Thank you all so much!